Wired (e.g., cable or fiber) and wireless (e.g., satellite) television (TV) service providers typically provide an interactive program guide (IPG) as part of their TV package for consumer end-users. Such packages may include a mixture of audio-visual, audio, visual and even text-based offerings. IPGs generally provide a listing of programs available on TV channels offered by the TV service provider, and enable users to submit queries for desired program information. For example, a user may submit a search query for a specific program, actor, time slot, etc., and the IPG will return a list of results matching the query. IPGs are generally accessible through set-top boxes (STBs) provided to customers by the service provider. The STBs typically download IPG data describing a schedule of programs for available channels from servers in selective communication with the STB. Under some circumstances the servers may additionally be accessible from the Internet, to allow websites to download IPG data from the servers so a user may view and submit queries to an IPG with a computer.
While IPGs may be conveniently viewed within a web browser on a full-scale computing system, e.g., a laptop or desktop computer, several drawbacks are inherent in IPGs when viewed on a mobile device such as a wireless phone or handheld computer. For example, mobile devices typically offer a smaller screen and less computing power than full-scale computer systems, limiting the amount of data which may be presented to the user at once. The limited computing resources afforded by most mobile device also generally means that browsers provided on mobile devices cannot persist user data locally on the device. Mobile devices typically rely upon plain HTML browsers, which may have difficulty displaying such large amounts of complex data typical of IPGs. Accordingly, mobile devices are generally not suitable for viewing IPGs.